This was so far from
being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results
of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength
with which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the
originating cause of the interest she felt in me.
being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results
of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength
with which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the
originating cause of the interest she felt in me.
Autobiography by John Stuart Mill
Another duty which was particularly incumbent on me
as one of the Metropolitan Members, was the attempt to obtain a
Municipal Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject the
indifference of the House of Commons was such that I found hardly any
help or support within its walls. On this subject, however, I was the
organ of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom,
and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the
agitation on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in
Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during the
short time they were allowed to remain before the House; after having
taken an active part in the work of a Committee presided over by Mr.
Ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the Session of 1866, to
take evidence on the subject. The very different position in which the
question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation
which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible
effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private
interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a
similar period of incubation to go through.
The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do work
which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my
duty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasions
when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the
House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an
Irish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes were
given, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren,
Mr. T. B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]
was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in
Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing
Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits to
have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all its
freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an
apology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, that
more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with
the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable
opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the Reform
Bill. During this silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned
out a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more.
Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction,
have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the success it was. My
position in the House was further improved by a speech in which I
insisted on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coal
supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the Tory
leaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, and
called me to account for others, especially for one in my
_Considerations on Representative Government_, which said that the
Conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest
party. They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up
to that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "the
stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. Having
now no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, I confined
myself, as I have since thought too much, to occasions on which my
services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough from
speaking on the great party questions. With the exception of Irish
questions, and those which concerned the working classes, a single
speech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributed
to the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions.
I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part I took on
the two classes of subjects just mentioned. With regard to the working
classes, the chief topic of my speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill was
the assertion of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after the
resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession of a Tory
Government, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in
Hyde Park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the
park railing by the crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of the
working men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffle
ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, and
the exasperation of the working men was extreme. They showed a
determination to make another attempt at a meeting in the Park, to which
many of them would probably have come armed; the Government made
military preparations to resist the attempt, and something very serious
seemed impending. At this crisis I really believe that I was the means
of preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken the
side of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the
Government. I was invited, with several other Radical members, to a
conference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform League;
and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up the
Hyde Park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr.
Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it
was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence in
the same direction, thus far without success. It was the working men who
held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I was
obliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. I told them that a
proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military,
could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairs
had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought
themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable
discussion, they at last yielded: and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole
that their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his
relief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the working
men had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to comply with their
request that I would attend and speak at their meeting at the
Agricultural Hall; the only meeting called by the Reform League which I
ever attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, on
the avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of manhood
suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented entirely; and I
could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on the
assurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied;
since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes
to take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length of
the principle. I have entered thus particularly into this matter because
my conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory and
Tory-Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shown
myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I do
not know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankful
to me if they knew from what I had, in all probability preserved them.
And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particular
juncture, by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at that
moment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes,
except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr.
Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr. Bright because he was out of town.
When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill to prevent
public meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke strongly in opposition to
it, but formed one of a number of advanced Liberals, who, aided by the
very late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what
is called talking it out. It has not since been renewed.
On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I was one of
the foremost in the deputation of Members of Parliament who prevailed on
Lord Derby to spare the life of the condemned Fenian insurgent, General
Burke. The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of
the party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more from me than an
emphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced
a position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time been
little challenged, especially in Parliament, and the backward state of
the question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind, was evidenced
by the extremely mild measure brought in by Lord Russell's government in
1866, which nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I delivered
one of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down some
of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less to
stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. The
engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform prevented either this bill,
or one of a similar character brought in by Lord Derby's Government,
from being carried through. They never got beyond the second reading.
Meanwhile the signs of Irish disaffection had become much more decided;
the demand for complete separation between the two countries had assumed
a menacing aspect, and there were few who did not feel that if there was
still any chance of reconciling Ireland to the British connection, it
could only be by the adoption of much more thorough reforms in the
territorial and social relations of the country, than had yet been
contemplated. The time seemed to me to have come when it would be useful
to speak out my whole mind; and the result was my pamphlet _England and
Ireland_, which was written in the winter of 1867, and published shortly
before the commencement of the session of 1868. The leading features of
the pamphlet were, on the one hand, an argument to show the
undesirableness, for Ireland as well as England, of separation between
the countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling the land
question by giving to the existing tenants a permanent tenure, at a
fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the State.
The pamphlet was not popular, except in Ireland, as I did not expect it
to be. But, if no measure short of that which I proposed would do full
justice to Ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of the
Irish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on the
other hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim to a
trial, I well knew that to propose something which would be called
extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more
moderate experiment. It is most improbable that a measure conceding so
much to the tenantry as Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill, would have been
proposed by a Government, or could have been carried through Parliament,
unless the British public had been led to perceive that a case might be
made, and perhaps a party formed, for a measure considerably stronger.
It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and
middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce
them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look
upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and
violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther,
upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it
proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any
scheme for Irish Land reform short of mine, came to be thought moderate
by comparison. I may observe that the attacks made on my plan usually
gave a very incorrect idea of its nature. It was usually discussed as a
proposal that the State should buy up the land and become the universal
landlord; though in fact it only offered to each individual landlord
this as an alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than to
retain it on the new conditions; and I fully anticipated that most
landlords would continue to prefer the position of landowners to that of
Government annuitants, and would retain their existing relation to their
tenants, often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the
compensation to be given them by Government would have been based. This
and many other explanations I gave in a speech on Ireland, in the debate
on Mr. Maguire's Resolution, early in the session of 1868. A corrected
report of this speech, together with my speech on Mr. Fortescue's Bill,
has been published (not by me, but with my permission) in Ireland.
Another public duty, of a most serious kind, it was my lot to have to
perform, both in and out of Parliament, during these years. A
disturbance in Jamaica, provoked in the first instance by injustice, and
exaggerated by rage and panic into a premeditated rebellion, had been
the motive or excuse for taking hundreds of innocent lives by military
violence, or by sentence of what were called courts-martial, continuing
for weeks after the brief disturbance had been put down; with many added
atrocities of destruction of property logging women as well as men, and
a general display of the brutal recklessness which usually prevails when
fire and sword are let loose. The perpetrators of those deeds were
defended and applauded in England by the same kind of people who had so
long upheld negro slavery: and it seemed at first as if the British
nation was about to incur the disgrace of letting pass without even a
protest, excesses of authority as revolting as any of those for which,
when perpetrated by the instruments of other governments, Englishmen can
hardly find terms sufficient to express their abhorrence. After a short
time, however, an indignant feeling was roused: a voluntary Association
formed itself under the name of the Jamaica Committee, to take such
deliberation and action as the case might admit of, and adhesions poured
in from all parts of the country. I was abroad at the time, but I sent
in my name to the Committee as soon as I heard of it, and took an active
part in the proceedings from the time of my return. There was much more
at stake than only justice to the negroes, imperative as was that
consideration. The question was, whether the British dependencies, and
eventually, perhaps, Great Britain itself, were to be under the
government of law, or of military licence; whether the lives and persons
of British subjects are at the mercy of any two or three officers
however raw and inexperienced or reckless and brutal, whom a
panic-stricken Governor, or other functionary, may assume the right to
constitute into a so-called court-martial. This question could only be
decided by an appeal to the tribunals; and such an appeal the Committee
determined to make. Their determination led to a change in the
chairmanship of the Committee, as the chairman, Mr. Charles Buxton,
thought it not unjust indeed, but inexpedient, to prosecute Governor
Eyre and his principal subordinates in a criminal court: but a
numerously attended general meeting of the Association having decided
this point against him, Mr. Buxton withdrew from the Committee, though
continuing to work in the cause, and I was, quite unexpectedly on my own
part, proposed and elected chairman. It became, in consequence, my duty
to represent the Committee in the House of Commons, sometimes by putting
questions to the Government, sometimes as the recipient of questions,
more or less provocative, addressed by individual members to myself; but
especially as speaker in the important debate originated in the session
of 1866, by Mr. Buxton: and the speech I then delivered is that which I
should probably select as the best of my speeches in Parliament. [10] For
more than two years we carried on the combat, trying every avenue
legally open to us, to the Courts of Criminal Justice. A bench of
magistrates in one of the most Tory counties in England dismissed our
case: we were more successful before the magistrates at Bow Street;
which gave an opportunity to the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's
Bench, Sir Alexander Cockburn, for delivering his celebrated charge,
which settled the law of the question in favour of liberty, as far as it
is in the power of a judge's charge to settle it. There, however, our
success ended, for the Old Bailey Grand jury by throwing out our bill
prevented the case from coming to trial. It was clear that to bring
English functionaries to the bar of a criminal court for abuses of power
committed against negroes and mulattoes was not a popular proceeding
with the English middle classes. We had, however, redeemed, so far as
lay in us, the character of our country, by showing that there was at
any rate a body of persons determined to use all the means which the law
afforded to obtain justice for the injured. We had elicited from the
highest criminal judge in the nation an authoritative declaration that
the law was what we maintained it to be; and we had given an emphatic
warning to those who might be tempted to similar guilt hereafter, that,
though they might escape the actual sentence of a criminal tribunal,
they were not safe against being put to some trouble and expense in
order to avoid it. Colonial governors and other persons in authority,
will have a considerable motive to stop short of such extremities in
future.
As a matter of curiosity I kept some specimens of the abusive letters,
almost all of them anonymous, which I received while these proceedings
were going on. They are evidence of the sympathy felt with the
brutalities in Jamaica by the brutal part of the population at home.
They graduated from coarse jokes, verbal and pictorial, up to threats of
assassination.
Among other matters of importance in which I took an active part, but
which excited little interest in the public, two deserve particular
mention. I joined with several other independent Liberals in defeating
an Extradition Bill introduced at the very end of the session of 1866,
and by which, though surrender avowedly for political offences was not
authorized, political refugees, if charged by a foreign Government with
acts which are necessarily incident to all attempts at insurrection,
would have been surrendered to be dealt with by the criminal courts of
the Government against which they had rebelled: thus making the British
Government an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms. The
defeat of this proposal led to the appointment of a Select Committee (in
which I was included), to examine and report on the whole subject of
Extradition Treaties; and the result was, that in the Extradition Act
which passed through Parliament after I had ceased to be a member,
opportunity is given to any one whose extradition is demanded, of being
heard before an English court of justice to prove that the offence with
which he is charged, is really political. The cause of European freedom
has thus been saved from a serious misfortune, and our own country from
a great iniquity. The other subject to be mentioned is the fight kept up
by a body of advanced Liberals in the session of 1868, on the Bribery
Bill of Mr. Disraeli's Government, in which I took a very active part. I
had taken counsel with several of those who had applied their minds most
carefully to the details of the subject--Mr. W. D. Christie, Serjeant
Pulling, Mr. Chadwick--as well as bestowed much thought of my own, for
the purpose of framing such amendments and additional clauses as might
make the Bill really effective against the numerous modes of corruption,
direct and indirect, which might otherwise, as there was much reason to
fear, be increased instead of diminished by the Reform Act. We also
aimed at engrafting on the Bill, measures for diminishing the
mischievous burden of what are called the legitimate expenses of
elections. Among our many amendments, was that of Mr. Fawcett for making
the returning officer's expenses a charge on the rates, instead of on
the candidates; another was the prohibition of paid canvassers, and the
limitation of paid agents to one for each candidate; a third was the
extension of the precautions and penalties against bribery to municipal
elections, which are well known to be not only a preparatory school for
bribery at parliamentary elections, but an habitual cover for it. The
Conservative Government, however, when once they had carried the leading
provision of their Bill (for which I voted and spoke), the transfer of
the jurisdiction in elections from the House of Commons to the Judges,
made a determined resistance to all other improvements; and after one of
our most important proposals, that of Mr. Fawcett, had actually obtained
a majority, they summoned the strength of their party and threw out the
clause in a subsequent stage. The Liberal party in the House was greatly
dishonoured by the conduct of many of its members in giving no help
whatever to this attempt to secure the necessary conditions of an honest
representation of the people. With their large majority in the House
they could have carried all the amendments, or better ones if they had
better to propose. But it was late in the session; members were eager to
set about their preparations for the impending General Election: and
while some (such as Sir Robert Anstruther) honourably remained at their
post, though rival candidates were already canvassing their constituency,
a much greater number placed their electioneering interests before their
public duty. Many Liberals also looked with indifference on legislation
against bribery, thinking that it merely diverted public interest from
the Ballot, which they considered--very mistakenly as I expect it will
turn out--to be a sufficient, and the only, remedy. From these causes our
fight, though kept up with great vigour for several nights, was wholly
unsuccessful, and the practices which we sought to render more difficult,
prevailed more widely than ever in the first General Election held under
the new electoral law.
In the general debates on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, my participation
was limited to the one speech already mentioned; but I made the Bill an
occasion for bringing the two great improvements which remain to be made
in Representative Government, formally before the House and the nation.
One of them was Personal, or, as it is called with equal propriety,
Proportional Representation. I brought this under the consideration of
the House, by an expository and argumentative speech on Mr. Hare's plan;
and subsequently I was active in support of the very imperfect
substitute for that plan, which, in a small number of constituencies,
Parliament was induced to adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely any
recommendation, except that it was a partial recognition of the evil
which it did so little to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked by
the same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles,
as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few Parliamentary
elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called the
Cumulative Vote in the elections for the London School Board, have had
the good effect of converting the equal claim of all electors to a
proportional share in the representation, from a subject of merely
speculative discussion, into a question of practical politics, much
sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
This assertion of my opinions on Personal Representation cannot be
credited with any considerable or visible amount of practical result. It
was otherwise with the other motion which I made in the form of an
amendment to the Reform Bill, and which was by far the most important,
perhaps the only really important, public service I performed in the
capacity of a Member of Parliament: a motion to strike out the words
which were understood to limit the electoral franchise to males, and
thereby to admit to the suffrage all women who, as householders or
otherwise, possessed the qualification required of male electors. For
women not to make their claim to the suffrage, at the time when the
elective franchise was being largely extended, would have been to abjure
the claim altogether; and a movement on the subject was begun in 1866,
when I presented a petition for the suffrage, signed by a considerable
number of distinguished women. But it was as yet uncertain whether the
proposal would obtain more than a few stray votes in the House: and
when, after a debate in which the speaker's on the contrary side were
conspicuous by their feebleness, the votes recorded in favour of the
motion amounted to 73--made up by pairs and tellers to above 80--the
surprise was general, and the encouragement great: the greater, too,
because one of those who voted for the motion was Mr. Bright, a fact
which could only be attributed to the impression made on him by the
debate, as he had previously made no secret of his nonconcurrence in the
proposal. [The time appeared to my daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, to have
come for forming a Society for the extension of the suffrage to women.
The existence of the Society is due to my daughter's initiative; its
constitution was planned entirely by her, and she was the soul of the
movement during its first years, though delicate health and
superabundant occupation made her decline to be a member of the
Executive Committee. Many distinguished members of parliament,
professors, and others, and some of the most eminent women of whom the
country can boast, became members of the Society, a large proportion
either directly or indirectly through my daughter's influence, she
having written the greater number, and all the best, of the letters by
which adhesions was obtained, even when those letters bore my signature.
In two remarkable instances, those of Miss Nightingale and Miss Mary
Carpenter, the reluctance those ladies had at first felt to come
forward, (for it was not on their past difference of opinion) was
overcome by appeals written by my daughter though signed by me.
Associations for the same object were formed in various local centres,
Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, and Glasgow; and others
which have done much valuable work for the cause. All the Societies take
the title of branches of the National Society for Women's Suffrage; but
each has its own governing body, and acts in complete independence of
the others. ]
I believe I have mentioned all that is worth remembering of my
proceedings in the House. But their enumeration, even if complete, would
give but an inadequate idea of my occupations during that period, and
especially of the time taken up by correspondence. For many years before
my election to Parliament, I had been continually receiving letters from
strangers, mostly addressed to me as a writer on philosophy, and either
propounding difficulties or communicating thoughts on subjects connected
with logic or political economy. In common, I suppose, with all who are
known as political economists, I was a recipient of all the shallow
theories and absurd proposals by which people are perpetually
endeavouring to show the way to universal wealth and happiness by some
artful reorganization of the currency. When there were signs of
sufficient intelligence in the writers to make it worth while attempting
to put them right, I took the trouble to point out their errors, until
the growth of my correspondence made it necessary to dismiss such
persons with very brief answers. Many, however, of the communications I
received were more worthy of attention than these, and in some,
oversights of detail were pointed out in my writings, which I was thus
enabled to correct. Correspondence of this sort naturally multiplied
with the multiplication of the subjects on which I wrote, especially
those of a metaphysical character. But when I became a member of
Parliament. I began to receive letters on private grievances and on
every imaginable subject that related to any kind of public affairs,
however remote from my knowledge or pursuits. It was not my constituents
in Westminster who laid this burthen on me: they kept with remarkable
fidelity to the understanding on which I had consented to serve. I
received, indeed, now and then an application from some ingenuous youth
to procure for him a small government appointment; but these were few,
and how simple and ignorant the writers were, was shown by the fact that
the applications came in about equally whichever party was in power. My
invariable answer was, that it was contrary to the principles on which I
was elected to ask favours of any Government. But, on the whole, hardly
any part of the country gave me less trouble than my own constituents.
The general mass of correspondence, however, swelled into an oppressive
burthen.
[At this time, and thenceforth, a great proportion of all my letters
(including many which found their way into the newspapers) were not
written by me but by my daughter; at first merely from her willingness
to help in disposing of a mass of letters greater than I could get
through without assistance, but afterwards because I thought the letters
she wrote superior to mine, and more so in proportion to the difficulty
and importance of the occasion. Even those which I wrote myself were
generally much improved by her, as is also the case with all the more
recent of my prepared speeches, of which, and of some of my published
writings, not a few passages, and those the most successful, were hers. ]
While I remained in Parliament my work as an author was unavoidably
limited to the recess. During that time I wrote (besides the pamphlet on
Ireland, already mentioned), the Essay on Plato, published in the
_Edinburgh Review_, and reprinted in the third volume of _Dissertations
and Discussions_; and the address which, conformably to custom, I
delivered to the University of St. Andrew's, whose students had done me
the honour of electing me to the office of Rector. In this Discourse I
gave expression to many thoughts and opinions which had been
accumulating in me through life, respecting the various studies which
belong to a liberal education, their uses and influences, and the mode
in which they should be pursued to render their influences most
beneficial. The position taken up, vindicating the high educational
value alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, on even
stronger grounds than are urged by most of their advocates, and
insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teaching
which makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies,
was, I think, calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvement
which has happily commenced in the national institutions for higher
education, but to diffuse juster ideas than we often find, even in
highly educated men, on the conditions of the highest mental
cultivation.
During this period also I commenced (and completed soon after I had left
Parliament) the performance of a duty to philosophy and to the memory of
my father, by preparing and publishing an edition of the _Analysis of
the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, with notes bringing up the doctrines
of that admirable book to the latest improvements in science and in
speculation. This was a joint undertaking: the psychological notes being
furnished in about equal proportions by Mr. Bain and myself, while Mr.
Grote supplied some valuable contributions on points in the history of
philosophy incidentally raised, and Dr. Andrew Findlater supplied the
deficiencies in the book which had been occasioned by the imperfect
philological knowledge of the time when it was written. Having been
originally published at a time when the current of metaphysical
speculation ran in a quite opposite direction to the psychology of
Experience and Association, the _Analysis_ had not obtained the amount
of immediate success which it deserved, though it had made a deep
impression on many individual minds, and had largely contributed,
through those minds, to create that more favourable atmosphere for the
Association Psychology of which we now have the benefit. Admirably
adapted for a class book of the Experience Metaphysics, it only required
to be enriched, and in some cases corrected, by the results of more
recent labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it now does,
in company with Mr. Bain's treatises, at the head of the systematic
works on Analytic psychology.
In the autumn of 1868 the Parliament which passed the Reform Act was
dissolved, and at the new election for Westminster I was thrown out; not
to my surprise, nor, I believe, to that of my principal supporters,
though in the few days preceding the election they had become more
sanguine than before. That I should not have been elected at all would
not have required any explanation; what excites curiosity is that I
should have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then,
should have been defeated afterwards. But the efforts made to defeat me
were far greater on the second occasion than on the first. For one
thing, the Tory Government was now struggling for existence, and success
in any contest was of more importance to them. Then, too, all persons of
Tory feelings were far more embittered against me individually than on
the previous occasion; many who had at first been either favourable or
indifferent, were vehemently opposed to my re-election. As I had shown
in my political writings that I was aware of the weak points in
democratic opinions, some Conservatives, it seems, had not been without
hopes of finding me an opponent of democracy: as I was able to see the
Conservative side of the question, they presumed that, like them, I
could not see any other side. Yet if they had really read my writings,
they would have known that after giving full weight to all that appeared
to me well grounded in the arguments against democracy, I unhesitatingly
decided in its favour, while recommending that it should be accompanied
by such institutions as were consistent with its principle and
calculated to ward off its inconveniences: one of the chief of these
remedies being Proportional Representation, on which scarcely any of the
Conservatives gave me any support. Some Tory expectations appear to have
been founded on the approbation I had expressed of plural voting, under
certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the suggestion of this
sort made in one of the resolutions which Mr. Disraeli introduced into
the House preparatory to his Reform Bill (a suggestion which meeting
with no favour, he did not press), may have been occasioned by what I
had written on the point: but if so, it was forgotten that I had made it
an express condition that the privilege of a plurality of votes should
be annexed to education, not to property, and even so, had approved of
it only on the supposition of universal suffrage. How utterly
inadmissible such plural voting would be under the suffrage given by the
present Reform Act, is proved, to any who could otherwise doubt it, by
the very small weight which the working classes are found to possess in
elections, even under the law which gives no more votes to any one
elector than to any other.
While I thus was far more obnoxious to the Tory interest, and to many
Conservative Liberals than I had formerly been, the course I pursued in
Parliament had by no means been such as to make Liberals generally at
all enthusiastic in my support. It has already been mentioned, how large
a proportion of my prominent appearances had been on questions on which
I differed from most of the Liberal party, or about which they cared
little, and how few occasions there had been on which the line I took
was such as could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organ
of their opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited, in many
minds, a personal prejudice against me. Many were offended by what they
called the persecution of Mr. Eyre: and still greater offence was taken
at my sending a subscription to the election expenses of Mr. Bradlaugh.
Having refused to be at any expense for my own election, and having had
all its expenses defrayed by others, I felt under a peculiar obligation
to subscribe in my turn where funds were deficient for candidates whose
election was desirable. I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all
the working class candidates, and among others to Mr. Bradlaugh. He had
the support of the working classes; having heard him speak, I knew him
to be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the reverse of a
demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing
opinion of the democratic party on two such important subjects as
Malthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this sort, who, while
sharing the democratic feelings of the working classes, judged political
questions for themselves, and had courage to assert their individual
convictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me,
in Parliament, and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religious
opinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them)
ought to exclude him. In subscribing, however, to his election, I did
what would have been highly imprudent if I had been at liberty to
consider only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might be
expected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was made of
this act of mine to stir up the electors of Westminster against me. To
these various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual
pecuniary and other influences on the side of my Tory competitor, while
none were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I failed at my
second election after having succeeded at the first. No sooner was the
result of the election known than I received three or four invitations
to become a candidate for other constituencies, chiefly counties; but
even if success could have been expected, and this without expense, I
was not disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life.
I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; and
if I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerous
expressions of regret which I received from all sorts of persons and
places, and in a most marked degree from those members of the liberal
party in Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to act.
Since that time little has occurred which there is need to commemorate
in this place. I returned to my old pursuits and to the enjoyment of a
country life in the south of Europe, alternating twice a year with a
residence of some weeks or months in the neighbourhood of London. I have
written various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my friend Mr.
Morley's _Fortnightly Review_), have made a small number of speeches on
public occasions, especially at the meetings of the Women's Suffrage
Society, have published the _Subjection of Women_, written some years
before, with some additions [by my daughter and myself,] and have
commenced the preparation of matter for future books, of which it will
be time to speak more particularly if I live to finish them. Here,
therefore, for the present, this memoir may close.
NOTES:
[1]In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceased
to be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; under
the inspiration not so much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose
_Constantine Paleologus_ in particular appeared to me one of the most
glorious of human compositions. I still think it one of the best dramas
of the last two centuries.
[2] The continuation of this article in the second number of the
_Review_ was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as
practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful
than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value.
[3] Written about 1861.
[4] The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her were
far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject
would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my
strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political,
social, and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and
women, may have been adopted or learnt from her.
This was so far from
being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results
of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength
with which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the
originating cause of the interest she felt in me. What is true is that,
until I knew her, the opinion was in my mind little more than an
abstract principle. I saw no more reason why women should be held in
legal subjection to other people, than why men should. I was certain
that their interests required fully as much protection as those of men,
and were quite as little likely to obtain it without an equal voice in
making the laws by which they were bound. But that perception of the
vast practical bearings of women's disabilities which found expression
in the book on the _Subjection of Women_ was acquired mainly through her
teaching. But for her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehension
of moral and social influences, though I should doubtless have held my
present opinions, I should have had a very insufficient perception of
the mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of women
intertwine themselves with all the evils of existing society and with
all the difficulties of human improvement. I am indeed painfully
conscious of how much of her best thoughts on the subject I have failed
to reproduce, and how greatly that little treatise falls short of what
it would have been if she had put on paper her entire mind on this
question, or had lived to revise and improve, as she certainly would
have done, my imperfect statement of the case.
[5] The only person from whom I received any direct assistence in the
preparation of the _System of Logic_ was Mr. Bain, since so justly
celebrated for his philosophical writings. He went carefully through the
manuscript before it was sent to the press, and enriched it with a great
number of additional examples and illustrations from science; many of
which, as well as some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of my
logical views, I inserted nearly in his own words.
[6] A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, were
prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the _Political Economy_
on iets first publication. Her dislike of publicity alone prevented
their insertion in the other copies of the work. During the years which
intervened between the commencement of my married life and the
catastrophe which closed it, the principal occurrences of my outward
existence (unless I count as such a first attack of the family disease,
and a consequent journey of more than six months for the recovery of
health, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to my position in
the India House. In 1856 I was promoted to the rank of chief of the
office in which I had served for upwards of thirty-three years. The
appointment, that of Examiner of India Correspondence, was the highest,
next to that of Secretary, in the East India Company's home service,
involving the general superintendence of all the correspondence with the
Indian Governments, except the military, naval, and financial. I held
this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than
two years; after which it pleased Parliament, in other words Lord
Palmerston, to put an end to the East india Company as a branch of the
government of India under the Crown, and convert the administration of
that country into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and third
class of English parliamentary politicians. I was the chief manager of
the resistance which the Company made to their own political extinction,
and to the letters and petitions I wrote for them, and the concluding
chapter of my treatise on Representative Government, I must refer for my
opinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change.
Personally I considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given enough of
my life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on the liberal
compensation granted. After the change was consummated, Lord Stanley,
the first Secretary of State for India, made me the honourable offer of
a seat in the Council, and the proposal was subsequently renewed by the
Council itself, on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy
in its own body. But the conditions of Indian government under the new
system made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste of
effort from any participation in it: and nothing that has since happened
has had any tendency to make me regret my refusal.
[7] In 1869.
[8]The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth
more for hanging than any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination
of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More.
[9] The first was in answer to Mr. Lowe's reply to Mr. Bright on the
Cattle Plague Bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to get
rid of a provision in the Government measure which would have given to
landholders a second indemnity, after they had already been once
indemnified for the loss of some of their cattle by the increased
selling price of the remainder.
[10] Among the most active members of the Committee were Mr. P. A.
Taylor, M. P. , always faithful and energetic in every assertion of the
principles of liberty; Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr.
Slack, Mr. Chamerovzow, Mr. Shaen, and Mr. Chesson, the Honorary
Secretary of the Association.
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as one of the Metropolitan Members, was the attempt to obtain a
Municipal Government for the Metropolis: but on that subject the
indifference of the House of Commons was such that I found hardly any
help or support within its walls. On this subject, however, I was the
organ of an active and intelligent body of persons outside, with whom,
and not with me, the scheme originated, and who carried on all the
agitation on the subject and drew up the Bills. My part was to bring in
Bills already prepared, and to sustain the discussion of them during the
short time they were allowed to remain before the House; after having
taken an active part in the work of a Committee presided over by Mr.
Ayrton, which sat through the greater part of the Session of 1866, to
take evidence on the subject. The very different position in which the
question now stands (1870) may justly be attributed to the preparation
which went on during those years, and which produced but little visible
effect at the time; but all questions on which there are strong private
interests on one side, and only the public good on the other, have a
similar period of incubation to go through.
The same idea, that the use of my being in Parliament was to do work
which others were not able or not willing to do, made me think it my
duty to come to the front in defence of advanced Liberalism on occasions
when the obloquy to be encountered was such as most of the advanced
Liberals in the House, preferred not to incur. My first vote in the
House was in support of an amendment in favour of Ireland, moved by an
Irish member, and for which only five English and Scotch votes were
given, including my own: the other four were Mr. Bright, Mr. McLaren,
Mr. T. B. Potter, and Mr. Hadfield. And the second speech I delivered[9]
was on the bill to prolong the suspension of the Habeas Corpus in
Ireland. In denouncing, on this occasion, the English mode of governing
Ireland, I did no more than the general opinion of England now admits to
have been just; but the anger against Fenianism was then in all its
freshness; any attack on what Fenians attacked was looked upon as an
apology for them; and I was so unfavourably received by the House, that
more than one of my friends advised me (and my own judgment agreed with
the advice) to wait, before speaking again, for the favourable
opportunity that would be given by the first great debate on the Reform
Bill. During this silence, many flattered themselves that I had turned
out a failure, and that they should not be troubled with me any more.
Perhaps their uncomplimentary comments may, by the force of reaction,
have helped to make my speech on the Reform Bill the success it was. My
position in the House was further improved by a speech in which I
insisted on the duty of paying off the National Debt before our coal
supplies are exhausted, and by an ironical reply to some of the Tory
leaders who had quoted against me certain passages of my writings, and
called me to account for others, especially for one in my
_Considerations on Representative Government_, which said that the
Conservative party was, by the law of its composition, the stupidest
party. They gained nothing by drawing attention to the passage, which up
to that time had not excited any notice, but the _sobriquet_ of "the
stupid party" stuck to them for a considerable time afterwards. Having
now no longer any apprehension of not being listened to, I confined
myself, as I have since thought too much, to occasions on which my
services seemed specially needed, and abstained more than enough from
speaking on the great party questions. With the exception of Irish
questions, and those which concerned the working classes, a single
speech on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill was nearly all that I contributed
to the great decisive debates of the last two of my three sessions.
I have, however, much satisfaction in looking back to the part I took on
the two classes of subjects just mentioned. With regard to the working
classes, the chief topic of my speech on Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill was
the assertion of their claims to the suffrage. A little later, after the
resignation of Lord Russell's Ministry and the succession of a Tory
Government, came the attempt of the working classes to hold a meeting in
Hyde Park, their exclusion by the police, and the breaking down of the
park railing by the crowd. Though Mr. Beales and the leaders of the
working men had retired under protest before this took place, a scuffle
ensued in which many innocent persons were maltreated by the police, and
the exasperation of the working men was extreme. They showed a
determination to make another attempt at a meeting in the Park, to which
many of them would probably have come armed; the Government made
military preparations to resist the attempt, and something very serious
seemed impending. At this crisis I really believe that I was the means
of preventing much mischief. I had in my place in Parliament taken the
side of the working men, and strongly censured the conduct of the
Government. I was invited, with several other Radical members, to a
conference with the leading members of the Council of the Reform League;
and the task fell chiefly upon myself, of persuading them to give up the
Hyde Park project, and hold their meeting elsewhere. It was not Mr.
Beales and Colonel Dickson who needed persuading; on the contrary, it
was evident that these gentlemen had already exerted their influence in
the same direction, thus far without success. It was the working men who
held out, and so bent were they on their original scheme, that I was
obliged to have recourse to _les grands moyens_. I told them that a
proceeding which would certainly produce a collision with the military,
could only be justifiable on two conditions: if the position of affairs
had become such that a revolution was desirable, and if they thought
themselves able to accomplish one. To this argument, after considerable
discussion, they at last yielded: and I was able to inform Mr. Walpole
that their intention was given up. I shall never forget the depth of his
relief or the warmth of his expressions of gratitude. After the working
men had conceded so much to me, I felt bound to comply with their
request that I would attend and speak at their meeting at the
Agricultural Hall; the only meeting called by the Reform League which I
ever attended. I had always declined being a member of the League, on
the avowed ground that I did not agree in its programme of manhood
suffrage and the ballot: from the ballot I dissented entirely; and I
could not consent to hoist the flag of manhood suffrage, even on the
assurance that the exclusion of women was not intended to be implied;
since if one goes beyond what can be immediately carried, and professes
to take one's stand on a principle, one should go the whole length of
the principle. I have entered thus particularly into this matter because
my conduct on this occasion gave great displeasure to the Tory and
Tory-Liberal press, who have charged me ever since with having shown
myself, in the trials of public life, intemperate and passionate. I do
not know what they expected from me; but they had reason to be thankful
to me if they knew from what I had, in all probability preserved them.
And I do not believe it could have been done, at that particular
juncture, by any one else. No other person, I believe, had at that
moment the necessary influence for restraining the working classes,
except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, neither of whom was available: Mr.
Gladstone, for obvious reasons; Mr. Bright because he was out of town.
When, some time later, the Tory Government brought in a bill to prevent
public meetings in the Parks, I not only spoke strongly in opposition to
it, but formed one of a number of advanced Liberals, who, aided by the
very late period of the session, succeeded in defeating the Bill by what
is called talking it out. It has not since been renewed.
On Irish affairs also I felt bound to take a decided part. I was one of
the foremost in the deputation of Members of Parliament who prevailed on
Lord Derby to spare the life of the condemned Fenian insurgent, General
Burke. The Church question was so vigorously handled by the leaders of
the party, in the session of 1868, as to require no more from me than an
emphatic adhesion: but the land question was by no means in so advanced
a position; the superstitions of landlordism had up to that time been
little challenged, especially in Parliament, and the backward state of
the question, so far as concerned the Parliamentary mind, was evidenced
by the extremely mild measure brought in by Lord Russell's government in
1866, which nevertheless could not be carried. On that bill I delivered
one of my most careful speeches, in which I attempted to lay down some
of the principles of the subject, in a manner calculated less to
stimulate friends, than to conciliate and convince opponents. The
engrossing subject of Parliamentary Reform prevented either this bill,
or one of a similar character brought in by Lord Derby's Government,
from being carried through. They never got beyond the second reading.
Meanwhile the signs of Irish disaffection had become much more decided;
the demand for complete separation between the two countries had assumed
a menacing aspect, and there were few who did not feel that if there was
still any chance of reconciling Ireland to the British connection, it
could only be by the adoption of much more thorough reforms in the
territorial and social relations of the country, than had yet been
contemplated. The time seemed to me to have come when it would be useful
to speak out my whole mind; and the result was my pamphlet _England and
Ireland_, which was written in the winter of 1867, and published shortly
before the commencement of the session of 1868. The leading features of
the pamphlet were, on the one hand, an argument to show the
undesirableness, for Ireland as well as England, of separation between
the countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling the land
question by giving to the existing tenants a permanent tenure, at a
fixed rent, to be assessed after due inquiry by the State.
The pamphlet was not popular, except in Ireland, as I did not expect it
to be. But, if no measure short of that which I proposed would do full
justice to Ireland, or afford a prospect of conciliating the mass of the
Irish people, the duty of proposing it was imperative; while if, on the
other hand, there was any intermediate course which had a claim to a
trial, I well knew that to propose something which would be called
extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more
moderate experiment. It is most improbable that a measure conceding so
much to the tenantry as Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Bill, would have been
proposed by a Government, or could have been carried through Parliament,
unless the British public had been led to perceive that a case might be
made, and perhaps a party formed, for a measure considerably stronger.
It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and
middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce
them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look
upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and
violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther,
upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it
proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any
scheme for Irish Land reform short of mine, came to be thought moderate
by comparison. I may observe that the attacks made on my plan usually
gave a very incorrect idea of its nature. It was usually discussed as a
proposal that the State should buy up the land and become the universal
landlord; though in fact it only offered to each individual landlord
this as an alternative, if he liked better to sell his estate than to
retain it on the new conditions; and I fully anticipated that most
landlords would continue to prefer the position of landowners to that of
Government annuitants, and would retain their existing relation to their
tenants, often on more indulgent terms than the full rents on which the
compensation to be given them by Government would have been based. This
and many other explanations I gave in a speech on Ireland, in the debate
on Mr. Maguire's Resolution, early in the session of 1868. A corrected
report of this speech, together with my speech on Mr. Fortescue's Bill,
has been published (not by me, but with my permission) in Ireland.
Another public duty, of a most serious kind, it was my lot to have to
perform, both in and out of Parliament, during these years. A
disturbance in Jamaica, provoked in the first instance by injustice, and
exaggerated by rage and panic into a premeditated rebellion, had been
the motive or excuse for taking hundreds of innocent lives by military
violence, or by sentence of what were called courts-martial, continuing
for weeks after the brief disturbance had been put down; with many added
atrocities of destruction of property logging women as well as men, and
a general display of the brutal recklessness which usually prevails when
fire and sword are let loose. The perpetrators of those deeds were
defended and applauded in England by the same kind of people who had so
long upheld negro slavery: and it seemed at first as if the British
nation was about to incur the disgrace of letting pass without even a
protest, excesses of authority as revolting as any of those for which,
when perpetrated by the instruments of other governments, Englishmen can
hardly find terms sufficient to express their abhorrence. After a short
time, however, an indignant feeling was roused: a voluntary Association
formed itself under the name of the Jamaica Committee, to take such
deliberation and action as the case might admit of, and adhesions poured
in from all parts of the country. I was abroad at the time, but I sent
in my name to the Committee as soon as I heard of it, and took an active
part in the proceedings from the time of my return. There was much more
at stake than only justice to the negroes, imperative as was that
consideration. The question was, whether the British dependencies, and
eventually, perhaps, Great Britain itself, were to be under the
government of law, or of military licence; whether the lives and persons
of British subjects are at the mercy of any two or three officers
however raw and inexperienced or reckless and brutal, whom a
panic-stricken Governor, or other functionary, may assume the right to
constitute into a so-called court-martial. This question could only be
decided by an appeal to the tribunals; and such an appeal the Committee
determined to make. Their determination led to a change in the
chairmanship of the Committee, as the chairman, Mr. Charles Buxton,
thought it not unjust indeed, but inexpedient, to prosecute Governor
Eyre and his principal subordinates in a criminal court: but a
numerously attended general meeting of the Association having decided
this point against him, Mr. Buxton withdrew from the Committee, though
continuing to work in the cause, and I was, quite unexpectedly on my own
part, proposed and elected chairman. It became, in consequence, my duty
to represent the Committee in the House of Commons, sometimes by putting
questions to the Government, sometimes as the recipient of questions,
more or less provocative, addressed by individual members to myself; but
especially as speaker in the important debate originated in the session
of 1866, by Mr. Buxton: and the speech I then delivered is that which I
should probably select as the best of my speeches in Parliament. [10] For
more than two years we carried on the combat, trying every avenue
legally open to us, to the Courts of Criminal Justice. A bench of
magistrates in one of the most Tory counties in England dismissed our
case: we were more successful before the magistrates at Bow Street;
which gave an opportunity to the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's
Bench, Sir Alexander Cockburn, for delivering his celebrated charge,
which settled the law of the question in favour of liberty, as far as it
is in the power of a judge's charge to settle it. There, however, our
success ended, for the Old Bailey Grand jury by throwing out our bill
prevented the case from coming to trial. It was clear that to bring
English functionaries to the bar of a criminal court for abuses of power
committed against negroes and mulattoes was not a popular proceeding
with the English middle classes. We had, however, redeemed, so far as
lay in us, the character of our country, by showing that there was at
any rate a body of persons determined to use all the means which the law
afforded to obtain justice for the injured. We had elicited from the
highest criminal judge in the nation an authoritative declaration that
the law was what we maintained it to be; and we had given an emphatic
warning to those who might be tempted to similar guilt hereafter, that,
though they might escape the actual sentence of a criminal tribunal,
they were not safe against being put to some trouble and expense in
order to avoid it. Colonial governors and other persons in authority,
will have a considerable motive to stop short of such extremities in
future.
As a matter of curiosity I kept some specimens of the abusive letters,
almost all of them anonymous, which I received while these proceedings
were going on. They are evidence of the sympathy felt with the
brutalities in Jamaica by the brutal part of the population at home.
They graduated from coarse jokes, verbal and pictorial, up to threats of
assassination.
Among other matters of importance in which I took an active part, but
which excited little interest in the public, two deserve particular
mention. I joined with several other independent Liberals in defeating
an Extradition Bill introduced at the very end of the session of 1866,
and by which, though surrender avowedly for political offences was not
authorized, political refugees, if charged by a foreign Government with
acts which are necessarily incident to all attempts at insurrection,
would have been surrendered to be dealt with by the criminal courts of
the Government against which they had rebelled: thus making the British
Government an accomplice in the vengeance of foreign despotisms. The
defeat of this proposal led to the appointment of a Select Committee (in
which I was included), to examine and report on the whole subject of
Extradition Treaties; and the result was, that in the Extradition Act
which passed through Parliament after I had ceased to be a member,
opportunity is given to any one whose extradition is demanded, of being
heard before an English court of justice to prove that the offence with
which he is charged, is really political. The cause of European freedom
has thus been saved from a serious misfortune, and our own country from
a great iniquity. The other subject to be mentioned is the fight kept up
by a body of advanced Liberals in the session of 1868, on the Bribery
Bill of Mr. Disraeli's Government, in which I took a very active part. I
had taken counsel with several of those who had applied their minds most
carefully to the details of the subject--Mr. W. D. Christie, Serjeant
Pulling, Mr. Chadwick--as well as bestowed much thought of my own, for
the purpose of framing such amendments and additional clauses as might
make the Bill really effective against the numerous modes of corruption,
direct and indirect, which might otherwise, as there was much reason to
fear, be increased instead of diminished by the Reform Act. We also
aimed at engrafting on the Bill, measures for diminishing the
mischievous burden of what are called the legitimate expenses of
elections. Among our many amendments, was that of Mr. Fawcett for making
the returning officer's expenses a charge on the rates, instead of on
the candidates; another was the prohibition of paid canvassers, and the
limitation of paid agents to one for each candidate; a third was the
extension of the precautions and penalties against bribery to municipal
elections, which are well known to be not only a preparatory school for
bribery at parliamentary elections, but an habitual cover for it. The
Conservative Government, however, when once they had carried the leading
provision of their Bill (for which I voted and spoke), the transfer of
the jurisdiction in elections from the House of Commons to the Judges,
made a determined resistance to all other improvements; and after one of
our most important proposals, that of Mr. Fawcett, had actually obtained
a majority, they summoned the strength of their party and threw out the
clause in a subsequent stage. The Liberal party in the House was greatly
dishonoured by the conduct of many of its members in giving no help
whatever to this attempt to secure the necessary conditions of an honest
representation of the people. With their large majority in the House
they could have carried all the amendments, or better ones if they had
better to propose. But it was late in the session; members were eager to
set about their preparations for the impending General Election: and
while some (such as Sir Robert Anstruther) honourably remained at their
post, though rival candidates were already canvassing their constituency,
a much greater number placed their electioneering interests before their
public duty. Many Liberals also looked with indifference on legislation
against bribery, thinking that it merely diverted public interest from
the Ballot, which they considered--very mistakenly as I expect it will
turn out--to be a sufficient, and the only, remedy. From these causes our
fight, though kept up with great vigour for several nights, was wholly
unsuccessful, and the practices which we sought to render more difficult,
prevailed more widely than ever in the first General Election held under
the new electoral law.
In the general debates on Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, my participation
was limited to the one speech already mentioned; but I made the Bill an
occasion for bringing the two great improvements which remain to be made
in Representative Government, formally before the House and the nation.
One of them was Personal, or, as it is called with equal propriety,
Proportional Representation. I brought this under the consideration of
the House, by an expository and argumentative speech on Mr. Hare's plan;
and subsequently I was active in support of the very imperfect
substitute for that plan, which, in a small number of constituencies,
Parliament was induced to adopt. This poor makeshift had scarcely any
recommendation, except that it was a partial recognition of the evil
which it did so little to remedy. As such, however, it was attacked by
the same fallacies, and required to be defended on the same principles,
as a really good measure; and its adoption in a few Parliamentary
elections, as well as the subsequent introduction of what is called the
Cumulative Vote in the elections for the London School Board, have had
the good effect of converting the equal claim of all electors to a
proportional share in the representation, from a subject of merely
speculative discussion, into a question of practical politics, much
sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
This assertion of my opinions on Personal Representation cannot be
credited with any considerable or visible amount of practical result. It
was otherwise with the other motion which I made in the form of an
amendment to the Reform Bill, and which was by far the most important,
perhaps the only really important, public service I performed in the
capacity of a Member of Parliament: a motion to strike out the words
which were understood to limit the electoral franchise to males, and
thereby to admit to the suffrage all women who, as householders or
otherwise, possessed the qualification required of male electors. For
women not to make their claim to the suffrage, at the time when the
elective franchise was being largely extended, would have been to abjure
the claim altogether; and a movement on the subject was begun in 1866,
when I presented a petition for the suffrage, signed by a considerable
number of distinguished women. But it was as yet uncertain whether the
proposal would obtain more than a few stray votes in the House: and
when, after a debate in which the speaker's on the contrary side were
conspicuous by their feebleness, the votes recorded in favour of the
motion amounted to 73--made up by pairs and tellers to above 80--the
surprise was general, and the encouragement great: the greater, too,
because one of those who voted for the motion was Mr. Bright, a fact
which could only be attributed to the impression made on him by the
debate, as he had previously made no secret of his nonconcurrence in the
proposal. [The time appeared to my daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, to have
come for forming a Society for the extension of the suffrage to women.
The existence of the Society is due to my daughter's initiative; its
constitution was planned entirely by her, and she was the soul of the
movement during its first years, though delicate health and
superabundant occupation made her decline to be a member of the
Executive Committee. Many distinguished members of parliament,
professors, and others, and some of the most eminent women of whom the
country can boast, became members of the Society, a large proportion
either directly or indirectly through my daughter's influence, she
having written the greater number, and all the best, of the letters by
which adhesions was obtained, even when those letters bore my signature.
In two remarkable instances, those of Miss Nightingale and Miss Mary
Carpenter, the reluctance those ladies had at first felt to come
forward, (for it was not on their past difference of opinion) was
overcome by appeals written by my daughter though signed by me.
Associations for the same object were formed in various local centres,
Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, and Glasgow; and others
which have done much valuable work for the cause. All the Societies take
the title of branches of the National Society for Women's Suffrage; but
each has its own governing body, and acts in complete independence of
the others. ]
I believe I have mentioned all that is worth remembering of my
proceedings in the House. But their enumeration, even if complete, would
give but an inadequate idea of my occupations during that period, and
especially of the time taken up by correspondence. For many years before
my election to Parliament, I had been continually receiving letters from
strangers, mostly addressed to me as a writer on philosophy, and either
propounding difficulties or communicating thoughts on subjects connected
with logic or political economy. In common, I suppose, with all who are
known as political economists, I was a recipient of all the shallow
theories and absurd proposals by which people are perpetually
endeavouring to show the way to universal wealth and happiness by some
artful reorganization of the currency. When there were signs of
sufficient intelligence in the writers to make it worth while attempting
to put them right, I took the trouble to point out their errors, until
the growth of my correspondence made it necessary to dismiss such
persons with very brief answers. Many, however, of the communications I
received were more worthy of attention than these, and in some,
oversights of detail were pointed out in my writings, which I was thus
enabled to correct. Correspondence of this sort naturally multiplied
with the multiplication of the subjects on which I wrote, especially
those of a metaphysical character. But when I became a member of
Parliament. I began to receive letters on private grievances and on
every imaginable subject that related to any kind of public affairs,
however remote from my knowledge or pursuits. It was not my constituents
in Westminster who laid this burthen on me: they kept with remarkable
fidelity to the understanding on which I had consented to serve. I
received, indeed, now and then an application from some ingenuous youth
to procure for him a small government appointment; but these were few,
and how simple and ignorant the writers were, was shown by the fact that
the applications came in about equally whichever party was in power. My
invariable answer was, that it was contrary to the principles on which I
was elected to ask favours of any Government. But, on the whole, hardly
any part of the country gave me less trouble than my own constituents.
The general mass of correspondence, however, swelled into an oppressive
burthen.
[At this time, and thenceforth, a great proportion of all my letters
(including many which found their way into the newspapers) were not
written by me but by my daughter; at first merely from her willingness
to help in disposing of a mass of letters greater than I could get
through without assistance, but afterwards because I thought the letters
she wrote superior to mine, and more so in proportion to the difficulty
and importance of the occasion. Even those which I wrote myself were
generally much improved by her, as is also the case with all the more
recent of my prepared speeches, of which, and of some of my published
writings, not a few passages, and those the most successful, were hers. ]
While I remained in Parliament my work as an author was unavoidably
limited to the recess. During that time I wrote (besides the pamphlet on
Ireland, already mentioned), the Essay on Plato, published in the
_Edinburgh Review_, and reprinted in the third volume of _Dissertations
and Discussions_; and the address which, conformably to custom, I
delivered to the University of St. Andrew's, whose students had done me
the honour of electing me to the office of Rector. In this Discourse I
gave expression to many thoughts and opinions which had been
accumulating in me through life, respecting the various studies which
belong to a liberal education, their uses and influences, and the mode
in which they should be pursued to render their influences most
beneficial. The position taken up, vindicating the high educational
value alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, on even
stronger grounds than are urged by most of their advocates, and
insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teaching
which makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies,
was, I think, calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvement
which has happily commenced in the national institutions for higher
education, but to diffuse juster ideas than we often find, even in
highly educated men, on the conditions of the highest mental
cultivation.
During this period also I commenced (and completed soon after I had left
Parliament) the performance of a duty to philosophy and to the memory of
my father, by preparing and publishing an edition of the _Analysis of
the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, with notes bringing up the doctrines
of that admirable book to the latest improvements in science and in
speculation. This was a joint undertaking: the psychological notes being
furnished in about equal proportions by Mr. Bain and myself, while Mr.
Grote supplied some valuable contributions on points in the history of
philosophy incidentally raised, and Dr. Andrew Findlater supplied the
deficiencies in the book which had been occasioned by the imperfect
philological knowledge of the time when it was written. Having been
originally published at a time when the current of metaphysical
speculation ran in a quite opposite direction to the psychology of
Experience and Association, the _Analysis_ had not obtained the amount
of immediate success which it deserved, though it had made a deep
impression on many individual minds, and had largely contributed,
through those minds, to create that more favourable atmosphere for the
Association Psychology of which we now have the benefit. Admirably
adapted for a class book of the Experience Metaphysics, it only required
to be enriched, and in some cases corrected, by the results of more
recent labours in the same school of thought, to stand, as it now does,
in company with Mr. Bain's treatises, at the head of the systematic
works on Analytic psychology.
In the autumn of 1868 the Parliament which passed the Reform Act was
dissolved, and at the new election for Westminster I was thrown out; not
to my surprise, nor, I believe, to that of my principal supporters,
though in the few days preceding the election they had become more
sanguine than before. That I should not have been elected at all would
not have required any explanation; what excites curiosity is that I
should have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then,
should have been defeated afterwards. But the efforts made to defeat me
were far greater on the second occasion than on the first. For one
thing, the Tory Government was now struggling for existence, and success
in any contest was of more importance to them. Then, too, all persons of
Tory feelings were far more embittered against me individually than on
the previous occasion; many who had at first been either favourable or
indifferent, were vehemently opposed to my re-election. As I had shown
in my political writings that I was aware of the weak points in
democratic opinions, some Conservatives, it seems, had not been without
hopes of finding me an opponent of democracy: as I was able to see the
Conservative side of the question, they presumed that, like them, I
could not see any other side. Yet if they had really read my writings,
they would have known that after giving full weight to all that appeared
to me well grounded in the arguments against democracy, I unhesitatingly
decided in its favour, while recommending that it should be accompanied
by such institutions as were consistent with its principle and
calculated to ward off its inconveniences: one of the chief of these
remedies being Proportional Representation, on which scarcely any of the
Conservatives gave me any support. Some Tory expectations appear to have
been founded on the approbation I had expressed of plural voting, under
certain conditions: and it has been surmised that the suggestion of this
sort made in one of the resolutions which Mr. Disraeli introduced into
the House preparatory to his Reform Bill (a suggestion which meeting
with no favour, he did not press), may have been occasioned by what I
had written on the point: but if so, it was forgotten that I had made it
an express condition that the privilege of a plurality of votes should
be annexed to education, not to property, and even so, had approved of
it only on the supposition of universal suffrage. How utterly
inadmissible such plural voting would be under the suffrage given by the
present Reform Act, is proved, to any who could otherwise doubt it, by
the very small weight which the working classes are found to possess in
elections, even under the law which gives no more votes to any one
elector than to any other.
While I thus was far more obnoxious to the Tory interest, and to many
Conservative Liberals than I had formerly been, the course I pursued in
Parliament had by no means been such as to make Liberals generally at
all enthusiastic in my support. It has already been mentioned, how large
a proportion of my prominent appearances had been on questions on which
I differed from most of the Liberal party, or about which they cared
little, and how few occasions there had been on which the line I took
was such as could lead them to attach any great value to me as an organ
of their opinions. I had moreover done things which had excited, in many
minds, a personal prejudice against me. Many were offended by what they
called the persecution of Mr. Eyre: and still greater offence was taken
at my sending a subscription to the election expenses of Mr. Bradlaugh.
Having refused to be at any expense for my own election, and having had
all its expenses defrayed by others, I felt under a peculiar obligation
to subscribe in my turn where funds were deficient for candidates whose
election was desirable. I accordingly sent subscriptions to nearly all
the working class candidates, and among others to Mr. Bradlaugh. He had
the support of the working classes; having heard him speak, I knew him
to be a man of ability and he had proved that he was the reverse of a
demagogue, by placing himself in strong opposition to the prevailing
opinion of the democratic party on two such important subjects as
Malthusianism and Personal Representation. Men of this sort, who, while
sharing the democratic feelings of the working classes, judged political
questions for themselves, and had courage to assert their individual
convictions against popular opposition, were needed, as it seemed to me,
in Parliament, and I did not think that Mr. Bradlaugh's anti-religious
opinions (even though he had been intemperate in the expression of them)
ought to exclude him. In subscribing, however, to his election, I did
what would have been highly imprudent if I had been at liberty to
consider only the interests of my own re-election; and, as might be
expected, the utmost possible use, both fair and unfair, was made of
this act of mine to stir up the electors of Westminster against me. To
these various causes, combined with an unscrupulous use of the usual
pecuniary and other influences on the side of my Tory competitor, while
none were used on my side, it is to be ascribed that I failed at my
second election after having succeeded at the first. No sooner was the
result of the election known than I received three or four invitations
to become a candidate for other constituencies, chiefly counties; but
even if success could have been expected, and this without expense, I
was not disposed to deny myself the relief of returning to private life.
I had no cause to feel humiliated at my rejection by the electors; and
if I had, the feeling would have been far outweighed by the numerous
expressions of regret which I received from all sorts of persons and
places, and in a most marked degree from those members of the liberal
party in Parliament, with whom I had been accustomed to act.
Since that time little has occurred which there is need to commemorate
in this place. I returned to my old pursuits and to the enjoyment of a
country life in the south of Europe, alternating twice a year with a
residence of some weeks or months in the neighbourhood of London. I have
written various articles in periodicals (chiefly in my friend Mr.
Morley's _Fortnightly Review_), have made a small number of speeches on
public occasions, especially at the meetings of the Women's Suffrage
Society, have published the _Subjection of Women_, written some years
before, with some additions [by my daughter and myself,] and have
commenced the preparation of matter for future books, of which it will
be time to speak more particularly if I live to finish them. Here,
therefore, for the present, this memoir may close.
NOTES:
[1]In a subsequent stage of boyhood, when these exercises had ceased
to be compulsory, like most youthful writers I wrote tragedies; under
the inspiration not so much of Shakspeare as of Joanna Baillie, whose
_Constantine Paleologus_ in particular appeared to me one of the most
glorious of human compositions. I still think it one of the best dramas
of the last two centuries.
[2] The continuation of this article in the second number of the
_Review_ was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as
practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful
than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value.
[3] Written about 1861.
[4] The steps in my mental growth for which I was indebted to her were
far from being those which a person wholly uninformed on the subject
would probably suspect. It might be supposed, for instance, that my
strong convictions on the complete equality in all legal, political,
social, and domestic relations, which ought to exist between men and
women, may have been adopted or learnt from her.
This was so far from
being the fact, that those convictions were among the earliest results
of the application of my mind to political subjects, and the strength
with which I held them was, as I believe, more than anything else, the
originating cause of the interest she felt in me. What is true is that,
until I knew her, the opinion was in my mind little more than an
abstract principle. I saw no more reason why women should be held in
legal subjection to other people, than why men should. I was certain
that their interests required fully as much protection as those of men,
and were quite as little likely to obtain it without an equal voice in
making the laws by which they were bound. But that perception of the
vast practical bearings of women's disabilities which found expression
in the book on the _Subjection of Women_ was acquired mainly through her
teaching. But for her rare knowledge of human nature and comprehension
of moral and social influences, though I should doubtless have held my
present opinions, I should have had a very insufficient perception of
the mode in which the consequences of the inferior position of women
intertwine themselves with all the evils of existing society and with
all the difficulties of human improvement. I am indeed painfully
conscious of how much of her best thoughts on the subject I have failed
to reproduce, and how greatly that little treatise falls short of what
it would have been if she had put on paper her entire mind on this
question, or had lived to revise and improve, as she certainly would
have done, my imperfect statement of the case.
[5] The only person from whom I received any direct assistence in the
preparation of the _System of Logic_ was Mr. Bain, since so justly
celebrated for his philosophical writings. He went carefully through the
manuscript before it was sent to the press, and enriched it with a great
number of additional examples and illustrations from science; many of
which, as well as some detached remarks of his own in confirmation of my
logical views, I inserted nearly in his own words.
[6] A few dedicatory lines acknowledging what the book owed to her, were
prefixed to some of the presentation copies of the _Political Economy_
on iets first publication. Her dislike of publicity alone prevented
their insertion in the other copies of the work. During the years which
intervened between the commencement of my married life and the
catastrophe which closed it, the principal occurrences of my outward
existence (unless I count as such a first attack of the family disease,
and a consequent journey of more than six months for the recovery of
health, in Italy, Sicily, and Greece) had reference to my position in
the India House. In 1856 I was promoted to the rank of chief of the
office in which I had served for upwards of thirty-three years. The
appointment, that of Examiner of India Correspondence, was the highest,
next to that of Secretary, in the East India Company's home service,
involving the general superintendence of all the correspondence with the
Indian Governments, except the military, naval, and financial. I held
this office as long as it continued to exist, being a little more than
two years; after which it pleased Parliament, in other words Lord
Palmerston, to put an end to the East india Company as a branch of the
government of India under the Crown, and convert the administration of
that country into a thing to be scrambled for by the second and third
class of English parliamentary politicians. I was the chief manager of
the resistance which the Company made to their own political extinction,
and to the letters and petitions I wrote for them, and the concluding
chapter of my treatise on Representative Government, I must refer for my
opinions on the folly and mischief of this ill-considered change.
Personally I considered myself a gainer by it, as I had given enough of
my life to india, and was not unwilling to retire on the liberal
compensation granted. After the change was consummated, Lord Stanley,
the first Secretary of State for India, made me the honourable offer of
a seat in the Council, and the proposal was subsequently renewed by the
Council itself, on the first occasion of its having to supply a vacancy
in its own body. But the conditions of Indian government under the new
system made me anticipate nothing but useless vexation and waste of
effort from any participation in it: and nothing that has since happened
has had any tendency to make me regret my refusal.
[7] In 1869.
[8]The saying of this true hero, after his capture, that he was worth
more for hanging than any other purpose, reminds one, by its combination
of wit, wisdom, and self-devotion, of Sir Thomas More.
[9] The first was in answer to Mr. Lowe's reply to Mr. Bright on the
Cattle Plague Bill, and was thought at the time to have helped to get
rid of a provision in the Government measure which would have given to
landholders a second indemnity, after they had already been once
indemnified for the loss of some of their cattle by the increased
selling price of the remainder.
[10] Among the most active members of the Committee were Mr. P. A.
Taylor, M. P. , always faithful and energetic in every assertion of the
principles of liberty; Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr.
Slack, Mr. Chamerovzow, Mr. Shaen, and Mr. Chesson, the Honorary
Secretary of the Association.
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